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Katie Barclay, ARC Future Fellow and Professor, Macquarie University

X has been used to represent love and kisses for centuries. But how did it start?

Wikimedia

“1,000 Letters and 15,000 Kisses” screamed the headline in an 1898 edition of the English newspaper, the Halifax Evening Courier.

Harriet Ann McLean, a 32-year-old laundry maid, was suing Francis Charles Matthews, a green grocer, for reneging on the promise of marriage.

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